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PAKISTANIS WRITING IN ENGLISH

The very first name, that comes close to our definition of Pakistani novelist of English is, AHMED ALI. He
can rightly be called the pioneer of English literature among the Muslims of the subcontinent. Born in Delhi
in a family of religious scholars, he was educated at Muslim University Aligarh. Later, he studied English at
Lucknow University where he also joined as a lecturer in 1931. After partition in 1947, he moved in Pakistan
and served in the diplomatic service till 1960. He died in 1994.Though Ahmed Ali wrote poetry and also
translated The Holy Quran in English, his fame rests on his novel Twilight in Delhi (1937), written
nostalgically about Delhi, the Mughal capital and epitome of Muslim elite culture. The novel skillfully
presents the fading away of the traditional culture of his ancestors. His second novel, Ocean of the Night
(1964), is on the theme of the ruin of aristocratic feudal families through indulgence in decadent practices.
Ahmed Ali’s last novel Rats and Diplomats (1985), is a satire on diplomatic services.

MUMTAZ SHAHNAWAZ is probably first female novelist of English. Her only novel, The Heart Divided
(1959), gives a meticulous glimpse of Partition of subcontinent. She died in 1948. The Heart
Divided attempts to provide the answers by raising questions that many from the present generation have
stopped asking. Mumtaz Shah Nawaz (1912-48) was a prominent freedom fighter, a poet and workers' and
women's rights advocate in Delhi and Lahore. An ardent Congress worker till the early 1940s, she
reluctantly and sadly turned towards the Muslim League and accepted the "notion" of Pakistan as
inevitable. Killed in an airplane crash at the age of 36 on her way to speak about Kashmir at the United
Nations, she did not live long enough to see the disenchantment with the new homeland that others who
came after her were to experience. In this quasi-autobiographical first and only novel, she traces her own
"conversion" to the idea of a separate homeland for the Muslims through the lives of two sisters, Zohra and
Sughra Jamaluddin — one an ardent supporter of the Congress and the other an equally enthusiastic
worker for the Muslim League in the Punjab. By the end of the novel a change is wrought in Zohra's heart —
a process of a slow churning that started in the 1930s.

In 1967, ZULFIKAR GHOSE’S debutant novel The Murder of Aziz Khan appeared on literary scene. It is
the first novel, in modern English, by a Pakistani expatriate writer in Britain. Ghose’s family belonged to
Sialkot. Later his family shifted to Bombay in 1942. Ghose was educated in England and married a Brazilian
woman in 1964, and has lived Latin America. The plot of the novel revolves around a poor Punjabi farmer
destroyed by a group of industrialists. Ghose’s remaining novels were set in South America, his wife’s
country and few reached Pakistan. It's interesting that many critics grant Zulfikar Ghose this status of being
a first Pakistani diasporic writer, since his only association with Pakistani nationality is the fact that he was
born in Sialkot, and is a Muslim. He's never lived in Pakistan, though at one point in the early 1960s he
almost moved there. Ghose's family left Sialkot for Bombay in 1942, and Ghose went to England to study in
1959. He married a Brazilian woman in 1964, and has lived in various places in the western hemisphere
(including South America) since then. Since 1969, Ghose has taught at the University of Texas. It seems like
Ghose is "Pakistani" by association, but defining writers that way could potentially open up some problems.
For instance, if the criterion is birth in what would later be Pakistan, many other writers might qualify,
including Khushwant Singh (who published his first novel, Train to Pakistan in 1956). The problem is with
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defining a "Pakistani" writer, which is exactly the same as defining a Pakistani person when citizenship is
not considered the main criterion.

The publication of The Crow Eaters by BAPSI SIDHWA broke new grounds. Born in Karachi in a
prosperous Parsi community, she later shifted to Lahore with her parents. Sidhwa’s childhood was difficult
as she was afflicted with Polio. She had to restrict herself to her home where she was educated till the age of
fifteen. Bapsi did her graduation from Kinnaird College for Women in Lahore. Her first novel was The Bride
which is about Zaitoon and her cultural maladjustment in tribal society. It was soon followed by The Crow
Eaters which presents the life of Faredoon Junglewalla and history of Parsi community. After receiving
many rejections, she published and distributed this second novel herself. Afterwards, in 1980, a British
publisher decided to publish it. Since then there has been no looking back. Her third novel Ice Candy Man
(1988) (also published as Cracking India) deals with partition and the lives people caught in it. In the
novel, the child protagonist, Lenny, is reminiscent of Sidhwa's own childhood. Like Lenny, Sidhwa too
suffered from polio as a child due to which she was not sent to school and had frequent visits to the
hospital. Her fourth novel, The American Brat (1993) is about Feroza Ginwalla who wants to get married
outside her community and the consequent anxiety of her parents. Her last novel, Water (2006) is set in
1938, when India was still under the colonial rule of the British, and when the marriage of children to older
men was commonplace. Following Hindu tradition, when a man died, his widow would be forced to spend
the rest of her life in a widow's ashram, an institution for widows to make amends for the sins from her
previous life that supposedly caused her husband’s death. Chuyia (Sarala) is an eight-year-old girl who has
just lost her husband. She is deposited in the ashram for Hindu widows to spend the rest of her life in
renunciation. She befriends Kalyani who is forced into prostitution to support the ashram, Shakuntala, one
of the widows, and Narayan, a young and charming upper-class follower of Mahatma Gandhi and of
Gandhism. Despite her initial reluctance, Kalyani feels attracted to the young man and eventually buys into
his dream of marriage and a fresh life in Calcutta. She eventually agrees to go away with him. Her plan is
disrupted when Chuyia, in her innocence, inadvertently blurts about the secret affair with Narayan while
massaging Madhumati one evening. Enraged at losing a source of income and afraid of the imminent social
disgrace, Madhumati locks Kalyani up. Much to everyone's surprise, Shakuntala, the usually God-fearing
widow, unlocks the door of the hovel and lets Kalyani out to go meet Narayan for the planned rendezvous,
and he ferries her across the river to take her home. The journey however, does not culminate in the happy
ending that Kalyani had hoped for, as she recognises Narayan's bungalow as that of one of her former
clients, and it turns out that Narayan is the son of one of the men she had slept with. In the shock of
realisation, she demands that he turn around the boat and take her back. A confrontation with his father
reveals to Narayan the reason of Kalyani's sudden change of heart. Disgusted to know the truth, he decides
to walk out on his father and join Mahatma Gandhi. He arrives at the ashram to take Kalyani with him, only
to find out that Kalyani has drowned herself in humiliation and grief. Meanwhile, Madhumati sends Chuyia
away with Gulabi, to be prostituted as a replacement for Kalyani for a waiting client (presumably Narayan's
friend's father). Shakuntala finds out and runs out to prevent the worst, but she only arrives at the shore in
time for Chuyia's return. As a result of being raped, the child is deeply traumatised and practically
catatonic. Cradling Chuyia, Shakuntala spends the night sitting at the shore. Walking through town with
Chuyia in her arms she hears about Gandhi being at the train station, ready to leave town. Intuitively, she
follows the crowd to receive his blessing before his departure. As the train is departing, in an act of despair,
Shakuntala runs along the train, asking people to take Chuyia with them, and to put her under the care of
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Gandhi. She spots Narayan on the train and in a last effort gives Chuyia to him. The train departs leaving
teary eyed Shakuntala behind, taking Chuyia into a brighter future.

ATTIA HOSAIN was born into a landowning aristocratic Muslim family in Lucknow, India. Her father
was educated at Cambridge University and her mother was the founder of an institute for girl’s education
and welfare. Hosain attended the University of Lucknow and in 1933 became one of only a few women of
her background to graduate for which she was awarded a Gold Medal. Reading and literature had been a
passion since a young age and influenced by the left-wing and nationalist politics of her family and friends,
Hosain became involved with the All-India Progressive Writers’ Association, a group of socialist writers
which included Ahmed Ali, Mulk Raj Anand and Sajjad Zaheer. In 1933 she attended the All-India
Women’s Conference in Calcutta, writing reports for Lucknow and Calcutta newspapers. In this period, she
also began to write short stories. In 1947, with the Partition of India and Pakistan, Hosain left India for
Britain with her husband and children, where she remained for the rest of her life. In 1953, she first
published a collection of twelve short stories, Phoenix Fled, set before Partition and depicting a feudal
society from the point of view of the benevolent aristocrat. In 1961, a novel followed to great acclaim and
success, Sunlight on a Broken Column, which also draws on experiences from her upbringing and affords
an insight into India’s landed classes. The heroine, Laila, is an orphan from a distinguished Muslim family
who defies convention to marry the man of her choice amid the tumultuous days of Independence from
Great Britain. Considered a seminal book, Sunlight on a Broken Column is remembered for its depiction of
a crumbling social order through the prism of a modern, feminist, left-leaning sensibility.

TARIQ ALI was born in 1943 in Lahore when it was still part of British India. Four years later the city
became part of Pakistan. Ali became politically active at a very young age — he led his first street protest at
the age of twelve and his first strike at fifteen. Under the military dictatorship of Pakistan, his political
activities caused concern and his parents decided to send him to England where he continued his education
at Exeter College, Oxford University. His activism continued when, in 1965, he became President of the
Oxford Union. It was during this period he also became involved with the New Left and started a long
association with the publication New Left Review. In 1967 Ali was accused of being a Cuban revolutionary
by authorities and in 1968 he debated and joined demonstrations against the Vietnam War and figures such
as Henry Kissinger. He was critical of American and Israeli foreign policies and also opposed American
relations with Pakistan that tended to back military dictatorships over democracy. In 1968 he joined the
International Marxist Group (IMG) and later became a member of the leadership. Ali’s fiction includes a
series of five historical novels about Islam known as The Islam Quintet: Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree
(1992), The Book of Saladin (1998), The Stone Woman (2000), A Sultan in Palermo (2005) and Night of
the Golden Butterfly (2010). These award-winning novels explore the long history of the clash of Islam and
the Christian West. They form an epic panorama that begins in fifteenth-century Moorish Spain with
Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree and closes in the twenty-first century cities of Lahore, London, Paris and
Beijing in Night of the Golden Butterfly. The first novel in the quintet, Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree,
is an account of Spain and the fall of Muslim Granada to Christendom through the eyes of one family whose
world has collapsed at the end of the fifteenth century. The Book of Saladin travels further back in history
to the twelfth century and returns to the conflict between Christianity and Islam. Set in Cairo, Damascus
and Jerusalem, the book is a fictional memoir of Saladin, the Kurdish liberator of Jerusalem. The next
novel, The Stone Woman, is a fictional account of the decline of the Ottoman Empire at the close of the
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nineteenth century. It centres on the wealthy and ageing figure of Iskander Pasha, descendant of the
Sultan’s favourite courtier. It is a story of masters and servants beset by insecurities arising from an Empire
about to fall. The fourth novel, A Sultan in Palermo, is set in the year 1153. The terrorist attacks on 11
September 2001 have informed much of Ali’s subsequent political writing. His books of essays The Clash of
Fundamentalisms (2002) provides a provocative response to the attacks by placing the events in an
historical perspective through an account of the history of Islam. Bush in Babylon (2003) is a collection of
poetry and essays which criticise the invasion of Iraq in 2003 by American president George W Bush.

HANIF KUREISHI was born on 5 December 1954 in Bromley, London to a Pakistani father and an
English mother. His father, from a wealthy family, came to Britain to study law. After giving up his studies
he married Kureishi’s mother Audrey and the couple settled in Bromley. Kureishi’s father worked at the
Pakistani Embassy while focusing on his own passion for writing. Kureishi attended school in Bromley and
in 1972 was studying for his A levels at Bromley College of Technology where he was elected President of
the Student Union. Some of the characters from his semi-autobiographical work The Buddha of
Suburbia are said to be from this period. He studied philosophy at Lancaster University but dropped out
after one year before subsequently obtaining his degree from King’s College, London. Kureishi wrote his
first play Soaking the Heat in 1976 which was produced at the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs in London.
During the late 1970s and 1980s several of his other plays were produced in London and in 1981 he won the
George Devine Award for two plays, Outskirts and Borderline about Asian immigrants in Southall. A year
later Kureishi became writer in residence at the Royal Court Theatre in London. In 1984, Kureishi came to
prominence with the screenplay, My Beautiful Laundrette, directed by Stephen Frears. A gay Pakistani-
British boy growing up in 1980s London takes over his uncle’s laundrette and makes it a success with the
help of his gay lover, a former racist skinhead. It was acclaimed for a subtle rendering of race, intimacy and
class issues and won the New York Film Critics Best Screenplay Award and was nominated for an Academy
Award for Best Screenplay.In 1990, his first novel The Buddha of Suburbia won the Whitbread Award,
which he later adapted into a four-part comedy drama for BBC television in 1993. Like many of his works,
this novel richly details interracial life in a London and suburban setting. It follows aspiring actor Karim
and his part in a production of The Jungle Book. He becomes aware his father is having an affair with the
mother of his love interest, a rock star called Charlie Hero (who makes cameo appearances in later works).
Finally, Kureishi places a number of farcical scenarios in relief to the 1979 General Election which brings
Mrs Thatcher to power along with a different set of social values. In 1995, Kureishi published the novel The
Black Album which contrasts the traditional values of an Asian household to hedonistic secularism. The
main character, Shahid, drinks, takes drugs and has an affair with his college tutor before joining a Muslim
student group. However, his life changes when he witnesses the firebombing of a bookshop selling Salman
Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses. In 2009, The Black Album was adapted for the stage and was
performed at the National Theatre in London. His novel Intimacy (1998) courted a measure of controversy.
Considered to be semi-autobiographical, the book revolves around a screenwriter’s thoughts as he prepares
to leave his young family after feeling rejected by his wife. Here, Kureishi demonstrates adeptness at
capturing a discontented, middle-aged man pressured by his own angst and an insecure sense of self. Also
in 1998, Kureishi adapted his short story ‘My Son the Fanatic’ from the collection Love in a Blue
Time (1997) into a film. It revisits the conflicts between Western hedonism and Islamic religious values as
seen earlier in The Black Album as well as the father–son relationship. Here, the tale is given a twist and
depicts an Asian taxi driver whose son, a strict Muslim, challenges his father’s drinking and friendship with
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a prostitute. The novel Gabriel’s Gift (2001) is another portrayal of a father and son relationship set in the
multicultural city of London. However, here Kureishi details a positive interpretation of broken family
relationships. A young boy encourages his father to regain his self-respect and in doing so finds his own way
to being creative. In 2008 Kureishi published the novel, Something to Tell You which incorporates
Kureishi’s long-standing interest in psychology as the reader once again witnesses the questioning of self.
The lead character, Jamal, is a psychiatrist who openly observes that secrets are his livelihood and, through
the form of a confession, he details his bohemian life in the 1970s, particularly his involvement with the
theatre world, his time spent in and out of pubs and his relationships. His recollections are imbued with
farce and comedy but he comes to the realisation that his main concern now is his twelve-year-old son Rafi
and the very different world he inhabits. The memoir My Ear at his Heart: Reading my Father appeared in
2004. Kureishi’s contribution to contemporary British fiction, through his screenplays, novels, plays and
short stories, evoke a multicultural London populated with sexually liberated people. His chronicles of
Britain’s shifting racial boundaries during the late seventies and eighties contradict conventional notions of
identity as well as constructs of generation, filial relationships, class, sexuality and gender and examines
what it means to be of Asian origin in Britain. Throughout his writings he adopts an ironic distance; both
white and immigrant communities are portrayed with a dry, detached humour in farcical and satirical
settings.

ADAM ZAMEENZAD is another expatriate writer whose novel The Thirteenth House (1987) describes
universal themes of migration and identity.

Presently, many young novelists are giving a new and distinct identity to this genre. The most important
among them is MOHSIN HAMID. Born in 1971, Mohsin was educated at Lahore and later in USA. His
debut novel was Moth Smoke (2000) which tells the story of a marijuana-smoking ex-banker in post-
nuclear-test Lahore who falls in love with his best friend's wife and becomes a heroin addict. The novel’s
anti-hero is Daru Shezad, a young banker who has been fired from his job and who subsequently drifts into
a world of drug addiction, poverty, and criminality. Daru kills moths when he’s bored. The bitter jealousies
that develop between Daru and his former friend Ozi (recently returned from study abroad, and now a
wealthy businessman), and that culminate in revenge, carry an allegorical weight within the context of the
broader nuclear rivalries between India and Pakistan. The extremes of wealth and poverty we encounter in
the abrupt shifts between Daru’s unlit room and the jet set society which he flutters around, echoes
Pakistan’s divided social state as its economy begins to crumble. The central image of the novel is of a moth
spiralling around a candle before bursting into flame. The fatal image of seduction echoes Daru’s own
dangerous obsessions and desires: with drugs, with wealth, with Ozi’s wife. His second novel The Reluctant
Fundamentalist (2007) discusses the reaction of an American educated young Pakistani man aftermath of
9/11 incident with strong autobiographical elements. The novel used the unusual device of a dramatic
monologue in which the Pakistani protagonist continually addresses an American listener who is never
heard from directly. Hamid has said The Fall by Albert Camus served as his model. The carefully contained
plot of The Reluctant Fundamentalist unfolds over the space of just a few hours following a chance (or is it
chance?) encounter in Lahore between returned Pakistani migrant, Changez, and an unnamed American
visitor. The two men take tea together in the market place of Old Anarkali, then share a meal, before
walking back through the darkness to the American’s hotel. Hamid fastidiously withholds information from
his readers and we are left wondering about the superficially innocent relationship between these new
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acquaintances. Is Changez seeking to ensnare the American? Or is the American seeking to ensnare
Changez? Or are these two possibilities merely fantasies/fears within the mind of a delusional Changez? We
have no way of knowing because the novel ends as abruptly and inexplicably as it begins. Moreover, the
potentially dialogic encounter between these two men is rendered as a dramatic monologue. It’s not just
that the unnamed American is a quiet American, but that Changez speaks for him so he can only be heard
in the responses of Changez: ‘How did I know you were American?’, ‘What did I think of Princeton?’. If this
narrative device feels slightly contrived it also serves to defamiliarise, or render strange and suspect their
exchange. It also heightens the reader’s sense of uncertainty about the power relations between the two
men. Changez, like Conrad’s Marlow, the ancient mariner, or Scherezade, seems to exert a mystical,
mesmerising power over the American who is twitchy and helpless in Changez’ presence. At the same time
there is the nagging feeling that the American’s silence is the ruse of a CIA agent biding his time as the
innocent and expansive Changez divulges the intimate details of his past. As Hamid has said of the form
of the novel: 'the narrator and his audience both acting as characters allowed me to mirror the mutual
suspicion with which America and Pakistan (or the Muslim world) looks at one another.'
Changez’ past forms the main body of the novel. Keen to reassure the American he is a harmless stranger,
Changez embarks on the story of his student days at Princeton, his growing love for Erica, and his meteoric
rise to number one in a US valuation firm, Underwood Samson. Then 9/11 happens. Watching the footage
alone on television Changez smiles, a reaction that subsequently unsettles him. In the months that follow,
Erica’s mental deterioration and the collapse of their companionship is echoed in Changez’ growing
estrangement from America, not to mention his growing a beard. Increasingly disillusioned by the US
response to 9/11, Changez loses his drive, and then his job, returning to Pakistan he becomes a lecturer and
activist campaigning against American foreign policy. Here then is the reluctant fundamentalist of the title.
But not quite, because fundamentalism is above all associated in the novel with American capitalism:
“Focus on the fundamentals. This was Underwood Samson’s guiding principle, drilled into us since our first
day at work. It mandated a single-minded attention to financial detail …” His third novel, How to Get Filthy
Rich in Rising Asia, bends conventions of both genre and form. Narrated in the second person, it tells the
story of the protagonist's (“your”) journey from impoverished rural boy to tycoon in an unnamed
contemporary city in “rising Asia,” and of his pursuit of the nameless “pretty girl” whose path continually
crosses but never quite converges with his. Stealing its shape from the self-help books devoured by
ambitious youths all over “rising Asia,” the novel is playful but also quite profound in its portrayal of the
thirst for ambition and love in a time of shattering economic and social upheaval.

Another young expatriate young writer is NADEEM ASLAM. He was born in Pakistan and migrated to
UK in his teens. He was educated at University of Manchester. But he did not complete the degree and left
his studies to become a writer. His first novel, Season of the Rainbirds was published in 1993 and
immediately caught the attentions of readers. The novel depicts tragedy, loss, and betrayal in exotic style.
His second novel, Maps for Lost Lovers (2004), took more than decade to write. It elegantly portrays
immigrant life in England. His latest novel is The Wasted Vigil, published in 2008, is about conflict in
Afghanistan and lives of individuals caught in it.

UZAM ASLAM KHAN is a female novelist of new generation of Pakistan. Born in Lahore, she has taught
English in USA, Morocco and Pakistan. Her first novel The Story of Noble Rot (2001) is about the
sweetness of life and our own doom. Her second novel Trespassing (2003) is the story of two young people
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who venture into a freer world. It gives a glimpse of the complex social, religious and economic shades of
Pakistan. Her third novel The Geometry of God (2007) is about identity crisis set during Zia rule in
Pakistan.

Another major female writer is KAMILA SHAMSI. Born in 1973 in Karachi, she belongs to family with
strong literary traditions. After her Pakistani childhood, Shamsie attended university in the US. Though she
is now based mainly in the UK, she has homes in all three continents. Her first four novels are set in her
home city, Karachi, Pakistan, while Burnt Shadows (2009) spans several continents but is partly based in
Karachi. Shamsie’s portrayals of Karachi are affectionate, vivid and complex, painting a picture of a vibrant
and lively city without romanticising it. Her international experiences have given her a different perspective
on her home environment, and this underpins her fiction - she often explores cross-cultural relationships
and cultural identity, particularly the burden of cultural history and family expectations. Shamsie’s first
novel, In the City by the Sea (1998) was acclaimed for its maturity and self-assurance, given that the author
was just 25 when it was published. Like most of her novels, it is set in Karachi and features the upper-
middle class elite and their experiences in a politically turbulent homeland. Its focus is 11-year Hasan, who
leads a charmed life in a secure, loving and affluent family, until his world is turned upside down when he
sees a young boy, much like himself, fall to his death while flying a kite. Hasan is thus made aware of the
frailty of life and how dramatically one’s secure environment can change. This incident is followed by the
arrest of his beloved uncle, Salman Mamoo, who is subsequently imprisoned for treason. The turbulent
political environment and oppressive military rule of the country thus infiltrates the novel as it infiltrates
Hasan’s sheltered world. The young boy responds by making use of his imagination and creativity - his
make-believe friends include characters from Shakespeare and from Arthurian legends. His incorporation
of fantasy into reality is not escapist, but uplifting and life-affirming, for it demonstrates the power of
imagination to transform one’s reality and to enable one to see the magical in the mundane. In Salt and
Saffron (2000), the protagonist Aliya, like Shamsie herself, is returning to her affluent family in Karachi
after studying in the US, an experience that has enabled her to step back psychologically and view her
culture from a slightly different perspective. Aliya’s family is an aristocratic nawab family, and she begins to
question the values with which she has been raised, particularly when she meets a man from a poor
background (he is the ‘salt’ to Aliya’s ‘saffron’). This is a culture in which the social hierarchy is rigid, and
Aliya begins to feel the burden of the family heritage she is carrying. As she explores the stories and secrets
of her ancestry, Salt and Saffron both celebrates and questions the culture of oral storytelling - Aliya is
aware of the richness and vibrancy of the family stories and the craft of storytelling itself, but equally this
storytelling culture has helped to create a web of ‘family identity’ which she now wishes to loosen. Salt and
Saffron is thus a poignant exploration of the search for a balance between individual identity and ancestral
and cultural heritage.
Kartography (2002) begins when the protagonists Karim and Raheen are in their early 20s, but depicts
their 1970s childhood through a series of flashbacks which also tell the stories of each of their parents. As
the childhood friendship of Karim and Raheen develops, the will-they-won’t-they sexual tension of their
personal story is set against the turbulence of political violence in Pakistan. The flashbacks particularly
emphasise the 1971 civil war. Once again, Shamsie explores the experiences of the wealthy elite in an
unstable nation which is constantly in danger of collapse. Just like Hasan in Shamsie’s first novel, the
position of the wealthy is not secure, and members of this social class are aware that they are standing on
precarious ground. Kartography’s title refers to Karim’s wish to create a detailed map of Karachi (the
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deliberate mis-spelling takes the ‘K’ from Karachi). To this day, the city of Karachi apparently has no
printed map, and locals rely on their intuitive knowledge and personal experience. Karim’s wish to
construct a map suggests his love for his home city, but also his desire to create order and to see the wider
picture from a detached perspective (for he is overseas when he begins drawing maps). Raheen, on the
other hand, cannot understand his need to do this. Broken Verses (2005), again set in Karachi, explores
idealist fundamentalism, and the conflict between personal life and political activity. Aasmani Inqalab is a
young woman in her 30s who is struggling with tragedy. Her mother, Samina, a feminist activist, has been
missing for 14 years, along with Samina’s lover, a revolutionary known as ‘The Poet’ who is presumed
murdered. Aasmani remains in a state of intense grief, but she has mixed feelings towards her mother - she
is intensely proud that Samina fought for her beliefs, yet also angry and hurt that she was neglected and
abandoned for the sake of politics. Consequently, Aasmani has not fully grown-up, and is uncertain about
her own belief-system and sense of identity - she is torn between her wish to continue her mother’s work
and her need to free herself from the shadow of this powerful woman. Aasmani’s character does not develop
extensively - at the end of the novel she is making a documentary about her mother’s life and work, and still
seems unable to move forward. Yet this perhaps represents a country that is still held back by idealistic
visions of the past. Burnt Shadows (2009) is an ambitious epic, and the first of Shamsie’s novels to move
outside Karachi. It spans more than half a century, from World War II to the 2001 World Trade Center
attacks and the post-9/11 world. Throughout this, it moves from the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, Japan to
the 1947 partition of British India, to the new Pakistan and later to Afghanistan and the US. All this is set
around the stories of two families who incorporate individuals of various different nationalities and several
cross-cultural relationships. Burnt Shadows opens, post-9/11, in Guantanamo Bay. An unnamed man -
naked, chained and terrified - asks ‘How did it come to this?’ as he is led into a cell. The novel, which
quickly moves back to 1945, before returning to Guantanamo at the end, sets out to answer this question.
The central character is a Japanese woman, Hiroko Tanaka, whose beloved German fiancée, Konrad Weiss,
is killed by the Nagasaki atom bomb. In her grief, Hiroko moves to India to find Konrad’s sister, who is
unhappily married to a British colonial, James Burton. Various cross-cultural relationships develop: Hiroko
forms a close bond with Konrad’s sister, before falling in love with a Muslim, Sajjad Ashraf. After the
partition of British India, Hiroko and Sajjad take their son Raza to live in Pakistan. Thus, Sajjad loses his
home city, Delhi, in the same way that Hiroko lost Nagasaki, and the novel explores the relationship
between place and identity, as well as relationships between people from vastly different cultures.
Shamsie’s saga combines the stories of the Burtons and the Ashrafs over many years, coming to a head
when the Burton’s son Harry becomes involved with the CIA, and Raza ends up in an Afghan training camp.
Burnt Shadows raises and explores a vast array of topical and controversial issues. As the characters
struggle to understand national identity, religion and politics, and the impact these issues have on their
own lives, the novel attempts to answer its opening question. Inevitably, an ambitious and far-ranging work
such as this raises questions more than answers, but Shamsie has been highly acclaimed for this epic novel
and its attempt to bring together world events from Nagasaki to Guantanamo, while depicting the personal
stories of two cross-cultural families whose pains and losses bring to life the real human suffering behind
war and politics.

BINA SHAH is another new name among young female Pakistani novelist of English. Where They Dream
in Blue (2001) is her first novel which presents the search for past and future in the background mystic
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tradition. Her second novel 786 Cybercafe (2004) deals with theme of the religious extremism and the
corruption. Shah’s third novel Slum Child appeared in 2009.

But the novelist who literally created a storm on the literary scene is MOHAMMED HANIF whose novel,
Case of Exploding Mangoes, published in 2008, received rave reviews. The novel is about the mystery
behind the murder of General Zia-ul-Haq who died in a plane crash of 1988. The novel was also Long-listed
for the Booker Prize. His second novel, Our Lady of Alice Bhatti (2011) is the story revolves around the
everyday life of a Christian nurse working in a government hospital in the Pakistani city of Karachi.

BANGLADESHIS WRITING IN ENGLISH

The first generation of “Bangladeshi Writers in English” includes a few poets. RAZIA KHAN AMIN came
up with a couple of collections of poems. Her poetry books Argus Under Anaesthesia (1976) and Cruel
April (1977) bear the stamp of her pre-eminence among English poets in Bangladesh. FARIDA MAJID is
another distinguished poet and literary translator. Her Take Me Home, Rickshaw (1974) is a collection of
poems by contemporary Bangladeshi poets translated in English. She has edited an anthology of English
poems titled Thursday Evening Anthology (1977).

KAISER HAQ is the most leading English language poet in Bangladesh. His poetic output is quite
substantial. They are as follows: Starting Lines (1978); A Little Ado (1978); A Happy Farewell (1994);
Black Orchid (1996); The Logopathic Reviewer's Song (2002); Published in the Streets of Dhaka: Collected
poems 1966—2006 (2008). Kaiser Haq is a consummate artist who has painted the contemporary
Bangladeshi scene with powerful imaginative mind and artistic precision.

In the realm of fiction, the name of ADIB KHAN, a Bangladeshi Diaspora author in Australia comes first.
He is a writer of real merit. His novels Seasonal Adjustments (1994) Solitude of Illusions (1996); The
Storyteller (2000); Homecoming (2005); and Spiral Road (2007) won global acclaim, and are mostly
concerned with themes of self-identity, sense of belonging, migration, and social dislocation. His style is
characterized by lucidity and sarcasm.

From her first appearance, MONICA ALI has been hailed by critics as that rare thing, “a writer who
seemed to have found, right at the beginning of her career and with absolute confidence, her own voice.”
(Natasha Walter, The Guardian, 2006) After a meteoric rise to prominence with Brick Lane (2003), Ali has
emerged as a chronicler of contemporary multicultural Britain able to channel a broad sweep of modern life
into well-crafted traditional novelistic forms. Her subsequent books have been more varied in their critical
success, and the excitement that surrounded her has become more subdued. But her forays into diverse
settings beyond her original terrain have continued to reach a wide audience. Brick Lane is set in the
eponymous area of East London and switches occasionally to Bangladesh. It begins with the troubled birth
of the central character, Nazneen, in 1967 in what was then known as East Pakistan. After a short preamble,
the majority of the novel is concerned with the events after her arranged marriage. She is sent to England at
the age of 18, with little knowledge of English, to live with her new, and to her, unappealing husband,
Chanu: ‘The man she would marry was old. At least forty years old. He had a face like a frog. They would
10

marry and he would take her back to England with him.’ The story of her sister who remains in Bangladesh
is delivered as an additional narrative through her letters. As Geraldine Bedell argues, the inclusion of her
news means that the definition of belonging is put into further doubt: ‘The pull of home, and the push of it,
is dramatised by Hasina, Nazneen’s sister, who took her fate into her own hands and made a love match,
only to see the marriage fall apart and her life spiral out of control’ The overarching theme of fate, and the
possibility of challenging it, is signalled in the epigraphs that cite Ivan Turgenev and Heraclitus. The
quotation from Turgenev, for example, invites a consideration of powerlessness and the loss of self:
‘Sternly, remorselessly, fate guides each of us; only at the beginning, when we’re absorbed in details, in all
sorts of nonsense, in ourselves, are we unaware of its harsh hand.’ Brick Lane also avoids such
simplifications through its postcolonial critique of imperialism and Englishness. It is within this framework
that independence, in terms of human and national identities, is preferred. Ali could have been forgiven for
mining this highly popular world of bustling multicultural London for the rest of her career. Instead, she
surprised readers and critics with her second novel Alentejo Blue (20006) by turning to Southern Portugal
and slowing the pace of her narrative greatly. As with her debut, a varied cast is drawn upon. It includes
British expatriates and local Portuguese inhabitants of the village and is written predominantly in the third
person as each chapter moves from the perspective of one character to another. The break from the third
person comes with Chrissie and Eileen’s chapters. These are two British women who have separately settled
for unhappy domesticity and the act of giving them first person voices may be interpreted as a means to
show that they are counteracting their earlier deference to others. The sadness and desires of the main
players (such as Chrissie, Eileen and João) are revealed gradually in this more slowly paced work. The first
chapter opens with a death from suicide as the aged João discovers the body of his friend and one time
lover, Rui, hanging from a tree. He cuts him down and the readers are told that he is now holding him in his
arms for a second time. João’s grief over a lost friendship and missed opportunities is concurrent with the
dominant theme of poverty. The narrative returns continuously to the poor economic conditions of the area
and the implicit sadness of emotionally unfulfilled lives. This is made explicit with the pronouncement that
this was the poorest area in the poorest country of the European Union until recently, but male suicide
rates are still the highest. By way of a contrast to the earlier parts of the novel, however, the final chapter
looks at this group of seemingly disparate individuals as a community and the moroseness is dispelled. In
comparison to Brick Lane, this is more subdued in its tone and subject matter, and this gives Ali the space
to demonstrate a perceptive interpretation of those who are just on the edge of happiness. This is enabled
with a strong dose of dramatic irony and occasional humour, which allows for a nuanced portrayal of how
the characters misread not only themselves, but also each other. With her next novel, Ali returned to the
broad ‘condition of England’ sweep and energized migrant environment of her debut. As the title
suggests, Into the Kitchen (2009) used the hotel restaurant in central London as one microcosm from
which Ali could range broadly over her now familiar themes of national identity, family and belonging.
Scenes from this setting are set against the very different world of a northern mill town where the father of
Gabriel Lighfoot, the London chef, is living out his last days in old age. To some this was the long-awaited
“follow-up” to Brick Lane, and it shares with her debut a spirited form of ensemble characterisation and a
flair for staging discussions and debates about Modern Britain. The kitchen in particular emerges an
appropriate vantage point from which to chart the fault lines of the capital and the nation at large.
Demonstrating her talent for surprising readers once more, Ali’s fourth outing The Untold Story altered
course again, taking readers to small-town America, and into the world of Lydia, a mysterious woman from
overseas cherishing her quiet life. As is revealed, this fish-out-water character’s secret lies in a faked death,
11

staged as a means of escaping a previous life as member of the British royal family. Inevitably, this thinly-
veiled speculative fiction on Princess Diana attracted much press attention and comment. The tabloid-
friendly premise of the novel allowed for a great deal of insightful and engaging discussion of fame,
celebrity and the pitfalls of the global media spotlight. But this slightly far-fetched, high-concept exercise
was less well-received than Ali’s previous works. Many critics found her grasp on the idioms of American
speech, and the nuance of US social mores inevitably less convincing than the sure grasp on the
contradictions and idiosyncrasies of Englishness that her previous works had shown.

Trained at Harvard as a professional anthropologist, TAHMIMA ANAM’S historical novels about

Bangladesh are works of intensive research and inspired ventriloquism. Born in 1975 into the Bangladesh
cultural elite and educated internationally, Anam is too young to have experienced her homeland’s drive for
independence and war with Pakistan in 1971. Her chosen mission in her two acclaimed novels to date has
therefore been to present the story of her parents’ generation for a new audience. The research for both her
books comes partly from interviews she conducted with family members and Bangladeshis who
experienced the conflict. The first fruits of this method can be seen in her debut A Golden Age (2007),
which opens in 1959 with the words of a widow to her dead husband: “I lost our children today.” Rehana
Haque, a young woman from an aristocratic but impoverished Calcutta family, has entered into an arranged
marriage with a businessman in Dhaka, only to see him die of a heart attack. With no money to fight her
husband’s rich brother, she temporarily loses custody of her two children, who are taken far away to
Lahore, in the west. After a mysterious bit of luck with an investment in real estate, Rehana is able to bring
them back, but has been marked by the loss. Although she builds an ordered life, her own dreams are
sacrificed. When the civil war begins, the true scale of the events that are unfolding take time to resonate
with her. Now in their late teens, her children react more decisively. Rehana’s daughter, Maya, moves to
Calcutta to write about the freedom fighters for a newspaper, and Rehana’s son, Sohail, gets himself to a
training camp for guerrillas, eventually returning to hide a cache of arms in his mother’s garden. At the
same time, Rehana’s hated brother-in-law comes to Dhaka as a member of the occupation. The
“sparseness” to the narrative is a key attribute to her fiction, both in its lack of details and in an abstract
poetic quality to her descriptions. Following the success of this auspicious debut, Aman returned to the
theme in The Good Muslim (2011), a sequel that picked up the siblings Maya and Sohail a decade after
having been separated during the war. Maya has pursued her revolutionary ideals whereas her brother has
become a charismatic religious leader. When Sohail decided to send his son to a madrasa, the inevitable
conflict grows between brother and sister. Developing her focus from her debut in confident and interesting
ways, the novel is notable for its nuanced depiction of the challenges of the nation-building process, and the
realities of corruption and compromise. The novel managed to avoid the pitfalls that beset highly-
anticipated contemporary novels. In her acknowledgements to A Golden Age, Anam coyly declares that her
work “is only what it is only because of the place that inspired it.” And indeed, it a subject she intend to
remain with, indicating that both novels are part of a projected trilogy on Bangladeshi history. Her
immersion in this historical project has earned her a status as a respected and prolific commentator on
global affairs in the British media.

SHAZIA OMAR’S first novel, ‘Like a Diamond in the Sky’ (2009) gives a dismal picture of drug addiction
in Bangladesh. MAHMUD RAHMAN’S debut short story collection ‘Killing the Water’ (2010) covers a
wide variety of themes ranging from the liberation war of Bangladesh to racial violence against new
12

immigrants in the USA. K. ANIS AHMED’S collection ‘Good Night, Mr. Kissinger and Other Stories’
(2012) offers stories based on different aspects of Dhaka city. NEAMAT IMAM’S ‘The Black Coat’ (2013)
is a controversial novel, which seeks to engage with the politics and history of Bangladesh. It is a dark and
dystopian portrait of Bangladesh under Prime Minister Sheikh Mujib. FARAH GHUZNAVI’S debut short
story collection, ‘Fragments of Riversong’ (2013) vividly portrays the trials and tribulations of people in
post-war Bangladesh. Her stories tackle day-to-day issues with sincerity and realism without being
judgmental or moralistic. MARIA CHAUDHURI’S debut book ‘Beloved Strangers’ (2014) is a memoir
which has the gentle unravelling of a not-unusual childhood in Dhaka with the later intensity of her adult
experience. ZIA HAIDER RAHMAN has earned huge critical acclaim after the publication of his debut
novel ‘In the Light of What We Know’ (2014), which, in Salman Rushdie’s view, is an “everything novel”. Set
against the backdrop of economic crisis and the war in Afghanistan, the novel is a wide-ranging
examination of global politics, rootlessness and post-colonial guilt that travels from Bangladesh to Oxford,
Kabul to New York, and that has already drawn comparisons with Sebald, Conrad and Waugh. RAZIA
SULTANA KHAN’S ‘The Good Wife and Other Tales of Seduction’ (2007) is a collection of fourteen short
stories based on the day-to-day lives of people in Bangladesh whose roles are characterized by tradition,
culture, gender, politics and religion.

SRI LANKANS WRITING IN ENGLISH

LUCIAN DE ZILVA’S The Dice of the God (1917) critically deals with the life of the author’s own class, the
westernised upper middleclass, to whose pseudo-British values he subscribes, and his Chandala Woman
(1919) represents an upper-middleclass criticism of the caste system that, though not as great a problem as
in India, is nevertheless a bane in Sri Lanka. HE WEERASOORIYA’S Trousered Harijana (1946) is the
only Sri Lankan novel to take as its main subject social mobility and the world of the lower middleclass,
conveying a sense of the suffering of this class and implicitly criticising the imperial government that
caused it. To celebrate the spirit of Sri Lanka’s independence, ROSLIND MENDIS wrote the historical
novel Nandimitta: A Story of Ancient Ceylon (1952) and Lucien de Zilva wrote Self-Portrait of a King: A
Romance (1954). These novels depict the pride of Sri Lanka’s history.

JAMES GOONEWARDENE’S novels, A Quiet Place (1968) and Call from Kirala (1971) treat the city
village dichotomy in a simplistic way. They deal with the ugly realities of both the city and the village people
and the difficulties faced by a person who wants to lead an undisturbed life. His works Bomb Explosion
(1978) and its revised version An Asian Gambit (1981) comment on the 1971 insurgency and frustration
among youth. One Mad Bid for Freedom (1990) is a satirical commentary on Sri Lanka’s political
atmosphere in the 1990s.

Sri Lanka’s novel in English came of age in the 1980s with ER SARACHCHANDRA’S With the Begging
Bowl (1986). The main theme of this novel is public concern, but at the centre there is a tragic love. Later,
his novel Foam upon the Stream (1987) made Sarachchandra the leading novelist in Sri Lanka.

MICHAEL ONDAATJE is, along with Margaret Atwood, one of Canada's most important contemporary
writers and one of the country's biggest cultural exports. Partly due to the phenomenal success of his
13

Booker prize winning The English Patient (1992) and, more recently, Anil's Ghost (2000), Sri Lankan born
Ondaatje is best known today as a novelist. However, he first achieved critical acclaim as a poet with early
collections like The Dainty Monsters (1967), Rat Jelly (1980) and his long poem The Man with Seven Toes
(1969). More recently he has returned to poetry with the publication of his long poem, The Story (2005).
Meditations on childhood, love and mythology, these poems reveal a preoccupation with language and
rhythm that is pursued later in his typically economical, lyrical prose fiction. Ultimately, Ondaatje is
perhaps best understood not as poet or novelist, but as an artist who has drawn into question the very limits
of such genres. In his playfully titled The Collected Works of Billy the Kid (1981) we are treated to some of
the formal exuberance and experimentation for which Ondaatje is critically respected. As its author has
stated, the book is not 'interested in the real Billy the Kid'. Often referred to as a 'collage', the 'collected
works' brings together, within a single, episodic narrative, songs, photographs, poetry, prose, interviews, a
play, as well as the white space of blank pages. Where the title of this text implies a 'complete' narrative of
its hero, the events of the text are ambiguous and fragmented. Its protagonists, Billy and Pat Garrett are the
product of plural perspectives, a combination of history and legend that ultimately favours uncertainty in
place of the whole story. In his first novel, Coming Through Slaughter (1976), Ondaatje continues his focus
on folk heroes, creating a fictionalised biography of Charles 'Buddy' Bolden (1876-1931), a legendary jazz
musician. Here Ondaatje develops the formal experimentation of The Collected Works to produce a prose
poem that is also 'a parable of the twentieth century artist'. Like Billy, Buddy exists outside 'official' history
and the narrative hints that this is a 'life' only available to us through music, stories and rumours. As if to
highlight the blurred boundaries between real and fictional lives, Ondaatje himself makes an appearance as
a character within the text. Life and art, biography and fiction are not polar opposites in this text, but
mutually constitutive categories. In Running in the Family (1983), Ondaatje turns away from America and
Canada in order to interrogate his own life and family history through a return to Sri Lanka. Written shortly
after a visiting the country of his birth, the text, once more, blends different genres in a fragmentary collage
of photographs, poems and stories. If the boundary between autobiography and fiction is frayed in Coming
through Slaughter, then in Running in the Family it appears to have been erased completely. More recent
works such as Handwriting (1998) and Anil's Ghost see Ondaatje dwelling increasingly on the history and
landscape of his native country. While early pieces like The Collected Works and Coming Through
Slaughter led to accusations that Ondaatje was an 'Americanised' artist, his writing since the late 1980s
reveals a growing preoccupation with the artist's 'roots' and the politics of race and migration. In the Skin of
a Lion (1987) fictionalises the lives of those migrants and minorities that participated in the construction of
Toronto in the early 1900s, but who have since been written out of the country's official history. In this
beautiful, poignant novel Ondaatje dwells on the work, the labour, the energy invested in Canada by those
settlers who are imagined as outsiders. In the Skin of a Lion is a profound exploration of the migrant
condition. It is a novel about the wearing and the removal of masks; the shedding of skin, the
transformations and translations of identity. His next novel, The English Patient (1992), takes up these
themes and issues in a more subtle, indirect manner. Ondaatje has said that the novel articulates ‘All people
born in one place who live in another place [and who] have lost their source’. In the place of origins and
sources, we are offered fragments: fragments of narratives, fragments of buildings, fragments of lives.
While Ondaatje's early work was without doubt critically successful, it was The English Patient, a work that
has also been translated into a successful film, that brought the author true international fame. Set in a villa
in northern Florence, The English Patient observes the tumultuous events at the end of Second World War
from the ‘margins’. The haunting, harrowing yet compelling narrative spirals around one woman (Hana)
14

and three men: Caravaggio (also the name of a key character in In the Skin of the Lion), Kip and the English
patient of the title. The mysterious, nameless protagonist is confined to an upstairs bedroom after receiving
horrific burns in a plane crash. Physically immobile, it is through his restless, drifting memory that the
story of the victim's past emerges through a series of teasing fragments that takes us on an intimate journey
between continental Europe and the African continent. Anil's Ghost (2000), Ondaatje’s much anticipated
follow-up to The English Patient, returns us once more to the author's Sri Lankan homeland. Here the
backdrop shifts from European World War to South Asian civil war and the horrors and traumas of post-
colonial violence. The novel tells the story of Anil Tissera, a forensic anthropologist who has trained in the
United States and in England. Anil returns to Sri Lanka to investigate a series of politically motivated
murders on the island. Paired up with anthropologist, Sarath Diyasena, it is the discovery of human
remains in the Bandarawela caves that drives their quest for the truth and which haunts both the novel and
its war-torn landscape. Ondaatje's latest novel confirms his status as one of the world's leading storytellers.
Ondaatje’s most recent novel, Divisadero (2007), takes its name from a street in San Francisco, and is
concerned with the intersections between what otherwise seem divided narratives. In the words of
Ondaatje, 'it’s a story where each half reflects the other'. One half focuses on a farm in California, the other
on Southern France before the outbreak of World War I. But there is also internal division. The first
narrative describes the disintegration of an already fragile family comprising a father, his biological
daughter (Anna), an adopted girl (Claire) and an orphaned boy (Coop). It is this story of division that
reverberates throughout the novel as Anna slowly discovers when she traces the life of writer Lucien Segura
in Europe. Ondaatje’s first novel in seven years has received a mixed critical reception, with many praising
Ondaatje’s writing style, but with some complaining about the contrived connections between the two
parts.

ROMESH GUNESEKERA was born in 1954 in Colombo, Sri Lanka where he spent his early years
followed by the Philippines before arriving in Liverpool, England in 1971. Having spent his formative years
in the idyllic surroundings of pre-civil war Sri Lanka, 1970s industrial Liverpool, which was very run down
in parts, was something of a culture shock. After graduating from Liverpool University with a BA Combined
Honours in 1976, Gunesekera moved to London and took temporary jobs as a van driver and a Harrods
porter to support himself while he wrote. Gunesekera’s first novel, Reef was shortlisted as a finalist for the
Booker Prize as well as for the Guardian Fiction Prize. The book is narrated by a young Sri Lankan boy
named Triton who is sent to work for a marine biologist, Mister Salgado. Forced to leave Sri Lanka because
of the worsening political situation, they move to London where Triton opens a restaurant. The Sandglass
(1998), Gunesekera’s second novel, centres on the character of Prins Ducal, a Sri Lankan businessman, and
his search for the truth about his father’s death. Gunesekera’s third novel, Heaven’s Edge, was published in
2002 and is a dystopian story set on an island in the near future. The Match (2006) is Gunesekera’s fourth
novel and one of the first in which cricket is celebrated. In 2008, a collection of his Madeira stories, The
Spice Collector, was published as a bilingual edition to celebrate the 500th anniversary of the founding of
Funchal in Madeira. In 2012, Gunesekera’s novel The Prisoner of Paradise was followed by another
collection of short stories, Noontide Toll, in 2014.

Born in Sri Lanka, SHYAM SELVADURAI is of mixed Tamil and Sinhala heritage. The possibilities and
impossibilities of similar “mixings” dominate his fiction. When he was 19, Selvadurai immigrated with his
family to Canada following the 1983 riots in Colombo. Selvadurai received a BFA from York University in
15

1989, and subsequently settled in Toronto. Selvadurai's skill lies in his ability to portray a world threatened
by various types of intolerance yet still possessed of beauty, humour and humanity. Shyam Selvadurai's first
novel, Funny Boy is at once innocent and wise, fanciful and uncompromisingly frank in its depiction of
Arjie Chelvaratnam’s happy and harrowing childhood. The novel focuses on Arjie’s coming of age during
the tumultuous years before the riots in 1983, when Sri Lanka's majority Sinhalese violently turned on the
minority Tamils. As Arjie experiences his sexual awakening, he realizes that he is doubly endangered as a
homosexual and a Tamil, because both identities have become intolerable in the Sri Lanka of 1983.
Selvadurai's novel details Arjie's struggles and eventual acceptance of himself as a gay man, a Tamil and a
citizen of the world. Funny Boy led to Selvadurai being classified and studied as both a “postcolonial” and
“gay” writer. Shyam Selvadurai's second novel, Cinnamon Gardens (1998) returns to Sri Lanka but this
time in the 1920s, when the country was known as Ceylon. Selvadurai's characters navigate an uncertain
world armed only with their own insecurities. The political and the personal merge as they do in Funny
Boy, as the main characters struggle to understand their true desires and identities in a world that will not
tolerate either. Annalukshmi is trapped between a looming arranged marriage and a desire for
independence that may ostracize her. Balendran is trying to maintain his appearance as a happily married
man while struggling with increasing homosexual desires. As in Funny Boy, Selvadurai's convincing
depictions of different but equally threatening personal dilemmas drive this engaging novel. Shyam
Selvadurai turned from fiction to autobiography in a 2003 essay “Coming Out,” published in an issue of
Time Asia dedicated to the Asian diaspora. The problems faced by Selvadurai and his partner in Sri Lanka
reveal that the themes of political and personal persecution in his novels are obviously drawn from his own
experiences. In his fourth novel, The Hungry Ghosts (2013) he creates an unforgettable ghost, a powerful
Sri Lankan matriarch whose wily ways, insatiable longing for land, houses, money and control, and tragic
blindness to the human needs of those around her parallels the volatile political situation of her war-torn
country. In Buddhist myth, the dead may be reborn as “hungry ghosts”—spirits with stomach so large they
can never be full—if they have desired too much during their lives. It is the duty of the living relatives to free
those doomed to this fate by doing kind deeds and creating good karma. The novel centres around Shivan
Rassiah, the beloved grandson, who is of mixed Tamil and Sinhalese lineage, and who also—to his
grandmother’s dismay—grows from beautiful boy to striking gay man. As the novel opens in the present
day, Shivan, now living in Canada, is preparing to travel back to Colombo, Sri Lanka, to rescue his elderly
and ailing grandmother, to remove her from the home—now fallen into disrepair—that is her pride, and
bring her to Toronto to live our her final days. But throughout the night and into the early morning hours of
his departure, Shivan grapples with his own insatiable hunger and is haunted by unrelenting ghosts of his
own creation.